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Email, Big Government and the War on Privacy

Finally, I cleaned out my Gmail inbox, one of the several email accounts I own. Since I rarely login to this particular service, there was a digital pile of 782 unread messages waiting for the delete button.

Skimming through one neglected missive after another, I noticed the ever-present Google ad affixed to each. One email commented on a music video I uploaded to YouTube years ago. The attached ad offered “Free Cha Cha Lessons” at the link. Another email was from an old friend mentioning his tax refund. What do you know, Google hit me with an ad for $20 off tax preparation from my neighborhood accountant. An email from a former co-worker mentioning caffeine? “Want Fresh Roasted Coffee?” was the ad headline.

On one hand, it’s pretty amazing how Google and other ad-based Web services can marry my daily conversations with a (sometimes) appropriate sales pitch. But it’s also pretty creepy. Even if it’s only robots trolling my account, I don’t want anyone seeing details about my ill relatives, my kids’ schedules or my award-winning collection of My Little Pony fanfic. (Keep the last one on the down-low, capiche?)

This email account also draws a lot of political email — criticism of the President and Congress, annoying federal laws, even campaign strategy ideas for conservative candidates. The bad news is that Google is reading all those messages too. The even worse news is that Google’s on record as unparalleled fans of President Obama, the Democratic Party and several liberal causes.

It’s certainly their right to make their political voice heard. But when you factor in the more than $18 million Google spent on lobbying last year alone, the Internet behemoth also has a huge motivation to curry favor with the powers that be. In modern Washington, Big Government plus Big Business often equals Big Cronyism.

Like all companies, Google will do what they think is in their best interest. It is government’s duty to make sure that the companies comply with all applicable rules and regulations. But as I noted in a recent article, the government has already dipped into your email without a warrant or even your knowledge. In 2012, officials accessed more than 30,000 of Americans’ personal accounts with next to no oversight.

Ultimately, our protection against such invasions of privacy is the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. It is past time that our government stops conducting “unreasonable searches and seizures” of our email accounts.

And while they’re at it, they should remove the appearance of impropriety from their cozy relationships with favored business interests.

No matter which circuit boundary you live in, the activism in the courts throughout the country affect you and your rights. Take a gander at the cases below to see the precedents being established that are threatening your civil liberties.

The House passed an amendment on June 19 to require the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant prior to collecting the communications of American citizens. This is pretty basic stuff, and it’s not a partisan issue - the amendment passed with the support of 158 Democrats and 135 Republicans.

When Blanche DuBois stepped off that streetcar named Desire and stepped into her sister’s rough French Quarter neighborhood, it was an era far different from our own. The New Orleans portrayed in Tennessee Williams’s iconic play wasn’t idyllic or gentle, but it had the charm of post-war cheerfulness. America had slogged through the Great Depression, won the fight against Hitler, and was rewarded with decades of prosperity. Stanley Fischer may have been a violent lout to his wife and sister-in-law, but there was a certain innocence to the time after the Great War’s sequel and before Lyndon Johnson’s guns-and-butter debauchery. Civil society was still a strong presence in American life and disputes were handled neighbor-to-neighbor. The idea of ubiquitous government surveillance in peacetime was alien.

Agricultural protectionism is nothing new. In 1892, President Grover Cleveland took a principled stand for limited government by vetoing a bill to bail out farmers from a crop-destroying drought. This is a portion of his response to the requested subsidies:

People often criticize capitalism as giving too much power to big business, and use this concern as a justification for more government intervention in the economy. But the kinds of business practices that are most damaging come not from free market competition, but from government-sponsored cronyism, where certain businesses are given legal advantage over others for political purposes.

On today’s edition of the FreedomCast, CJ Ciaramella joins me to discuss the latest revelations in the IRS targeting scandal, whether the White House received confidential taxpayer information against the law and if there’s any chance the DoJ will act to protect your privacy.
Related Links:

A report in The Daily Caller should scare each and every taxpayer. An investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found that IRS officials Sarah Hall Ingram and Lois Lerner emailed confidential taxpayer information to the White House.
This is the IRS that has persecuted Tea Party groups and it appears the illegal interactions between the IRS and White House had to do with challenges to Obamacare by religious organizations.